Education, water among topics Dem lawmakers address at forum
The three Democratic state legislators who represent south Yuma County appeared at a bilingual forum Tuesday night in San Luis, where overcrowded conditions at the local high school was the top discussion topic brought up by the audience.
The gathering at the Cesar Chavez Cultural Center was sponsored by the county’s Democratic Party, and Sen. Lisa Otondo and Reps. Charlene Fernandez (the House minority leader) and Gerae Peten faced a friendly crowd as they spoke about their successes and frustrations with this year’s legislative session.
Most of the frustrations were tied to being in the minority party, though they are barely so in the House of Representatives, at 29 versus 31 GOP members.
Fernandez, of Yuma, said she likes to use numbers to get people “angry,” in order to motivate them to political action. One of these was the fact that out of 332 bills passed by the Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, only five were originated by Democrats.
“That’s why I keep fighting for you. Your voice is not being heard,” she said.
Another number was one she came across recently, after the Democratic caucus asked Arizona Public Service how many times power is being shut off to Arizonans due to lack of payment.
This was in response to reports of a 72-year-old Sun City West woman dying in her home last summer, after her power was cut after she didn’t fully pay off an APS bill. Fernandez said the issue was addressed in a Democratic bill this session that never got to a committee.
“And then I held my breath, because I had a feeling that Yuma was going to have the most shutoffs. Yuma had 4,500 disconnects, in a one-year period, and we have the highest temperatures in the state. San Luis and Somerton had almost as many shutoffs, and percentage-wise you probably had the highest,” she said.
That figure was just for zip code 85364, she told the Sun on Wednesday.
The Arizona Corporation Commission passed a rule in June prohibiting utility companies from shutting off power to residential customers for nonpayment between June 1 and Oct. 15.
Otondo, also from Yuma, sits on several water-related committees at the Legislature, and was instrumental in the passage early this year of Arizona’s portion of the Drought Contingency Plan, an agreement between the states of the Colorado River basin on how to allocate water cutbacks when a shortage on the river is declared.
One audience member said she is considering retiring in Arizona, but is concerned about severe water shortages degrading her life and the value of her home.
Otondo pointed out that Yuma’s situation is unique due to its senior rights to the Colorado River, but she and others need to be vigilant about any attempts to authorize water transfers from counties on the river to the metro areas.
Still, she said, “I feel comfortable with water in Arizona. We need to do more, we need to manage our water better, and we need communities to do water planning, especially in other parts of the state. Cochise County, Pinal County. And we need an assured water program for the state.”
Several audience members who spoke at the townhall style meeting said they’re most concerned about the quality of education, in particular the large class sizes and student safety at San Luis High School. The campus has been rocked this year by overdoses and arrests related to the deadly opioid fentanyl, often sold on the street as a pill stamped with an “M30.”
San Luis Vice Mayor Maria Ramos said the community in some ways is thriving, recently cited as the state’s fastest growing city. But the high school is rushing to keep up, even as it sends more students to college than any other in the county.
Referring to a previous Spanish speaker who’d aired her concerns about the school, she said, “She was putting it nicely about the drug problem. There are overdoses. The M-30 drugs just hit us so hard, here in Yuma County. So we definitely have to work together but it’s attacking the youth. If we can have proper schools---you don’t want to hear about students sitting on the floor. Those are our kids. My kids are out of high school, but I don’t want to hear that anymore.”
Peten, a retired educator from the west Phoenix suburb of Goodyear, said she has been trying to get more resources for campuses across the state. One bill that was signed into law increases funding for school resource officers and school counselors, with school districts able to choose whether they wanted one or the other.
Some attendees said they would rather see more counselors than officers at local schools, but were afraid the Yuma Union High School District would choose the officers for every campus.
Peten said one issue that could be looked at is making more social workers available for schools.
“Problems are very complex, and our children have lives that are very complicated and complex sometimes, so it may not be something that a counselor can solve, but maybe a social worker can help work out some things, too,” she said.
Sergio Fernandez, husband of Charlene and a longtime school counselor, said the state’s current requirement for school counselors to have a 60hour master’s degree is not realistic, given the cost of getting such a degree and the salary they’d likely be making.
Peten, though she had earlier decried the state’s trend of loosening requirements in order to attract more teachers, said she could go along with his suggestion of a dual associate’s degree which could offer some training.
“We know that they’re into deregulating things, so perhaps we can put forth a proposal to come up with a combined type of credentials, counselor-social worker, something like that, to go into schools,” she said.